I am providing this article link with a great deal of merriment..but yes,
it's a real article, and not from the "Onion"...
Also, apparently a sounding rocket was launched today as well, ascending 75
miles.with apparently life support systems of some kind on board.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1367204/Iran-builds-worlds-flying-sa
ucer-Looks-like-belongs-1950s-B-movie.html
The photo looks highly suspect.
We've built a flying saucer, boasts Iran (even if it does look like it
belongs in a 1950s B-movie)
By Michael
<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/search.html?s=y&authornamef=Michael+Theodou
lou> Theodoulou
Last updated at 8:39 PM on 17th March 2011
Iran today boasted that it has built the world's first flying saucer.
Called the Zohal - or Saturn in English - it said the unmanned spaceship is
designed for 'aerial imaging' but added it can be used for 'various
missions'.
It was unveiled by the country's officially sanctioned media on the same day
it claimed to have launched a rocket into orbit with a test capsule capable
of carrying a monkey into space.
The hardline Fars news agency illustrated its story with a photo of a flying
saucer, akin to one appearing in a 1950s Hollywood B-movie, hovering over an
unidentified wooded landscape.
The reports gave no indication of the spaceship's size. But they indicated
it was small by claiming, somewhat bizarrely, that it can also fly indoors.
'Easy transportation and launch and flying, making less noise, are some of
the advantages of the device,' said ISNA, Iran's students' news agency.
'The device belonging to the new generation of vertical flyers is designed
for aerial photography.
'It is equipped with autopilot, image stabiliser and GPS and has a separate
system for aerial recording with full HD quality!'
Iran, which prides itself on its 2,500 year-old civilisation, is also keen
to show that it is at the cutting edge of modern science.
Tehran's ambitious space programme alarms the West because the same
technology used to send missiles into space can be used to build
intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Last year the country announced it had successfully fired a rocket that
carried a mouse, a turtle and worms into space.
Tehran insists it will be able to send a man into space in nine years' time.
For president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the advances demonstrate the country's
ability to push on with its science programme despite international
sanctions over its nuclear programme.
The flying saucer was said to have been unveiled at an exhibition of
'strategic technologies' attended by Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali
Khamenei.
At the same time Iran's Space Agency launched a test spacecraft designed to
sustain life in orbit.
The state IRNA news agency said the capsule was carried by a rocket called
the Kavoshgar-4 (Explorer-4) 75 miles into orbit before returning to earth.
Iran's often outlandish scientific claims usually prove difficult to
confirm.
American naval forces in the Persian Gulf have yet to come across a
'super-modern' radar-evading flying boat Iran claimed to have tested four
years ago.
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